In recent months, China has sparred with the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan over its extravagant territorial claims in the South and East China Seas, where Taiwan also has claims, and the West Philippine Sea. These conflicts have undermined regional security, impeded investment planning and sparked an undeclared military contest between China and its regional counterweight, the US.
Indeed, US Vice President Joe Biden recently made it clear that the resources and attention that the US is allocating to the Asia-Pacific region are aimed primarily at enhancing security and stability.
The US has “set about ... strengthening our alliances, deepening security partnerships, and investing like never before in regional institutions to help manage disputes peacefully,” Biden said.
The US’ increasing involvement in Asia has already bolstered the efforts of ASEAN to move toward a full-fledged diplomatic and economic “community,” akin in many ways to the European Economic Community that preceded the EU. The ASEAN Community — which ASEAN leaders hope to establish by 2015 — would be a concert of nations, bound together by a shared commitment to sustainable development, that is outward-looking, resilient, peaceful, stable and prosperous.
ASEAN’s pursuit of deeper integration follows a global trend toward using regional groupings and partnerships to gain economies of scale and enlarge “home” markets. At the same time, it reflects growing anxiety, stemming largely from China’s increasingly aggressive posture toward many of its neighbors.
China appears determined to reshape the international security and economic system that the US built after World War II and has led ever since — a system that has long protected the US’ Asian allies. As China’s power grows, the US is finding it increasingly difficult to preserve a regional balance of power that is favorable to its interests. As a result, increased burden-sharing among Asia-Pacific countries is needed to confront shared threats like cross-border terrorism, pandemic diseases, climate change and environmental degradation, and trafficking of people, drugs and weapons.
Fortunately, the region’s leaders seem to recognize this need. For example, defense spending is on the rise, even without cajoling from the US. India and Japan have recently launched new capital ships, and are deepening their military cooperation. The Philippines is renewing its old defense ties with the US, and deepening its nascent links with Japan.
However these pragmatic moves should not be viewed as evidence that Asia is on the verge of violent conflict. Despite their legitimate fears of military escalation in the South China Sea, Southeast Asia’s citizens remain optimistic that a peaceful, diplomatic resolution will be achieved, and that China will fulfill its commitment to forge a code of conduct for activities in ASEAN’s maritime heartland. The apparent inclination of China’s new leaders to work within a global rules-based system reinforces this hope.
Moreover, ASEAN’s pursuit of further integration is not rooted exclusively in concerns associated with China’s rise as a regional and global power. Long-standing threats to internal stability — including deep economic inequality, ethnic and religious conflict, and, in some cases, demands for territorial autonomy — remain acute. Just as the wealth created by European integration helped to reconcile historic divisions, such as those that once roiled northern Ireland, a genuine economic community in Southeast Asia can provide the dynamism needed to address deep-rooted domestic disputes effectively.
Indonesia — the largest of the 10 ASEAN countries — has assumed a leadership role in setting security landmarks on the road toward the ASEAN Community. Indonesia has also proposed an ASEAN Peacekeeping Centers Network and a Regional Peacekeeping Force — institutions that the region urgently needs and that, despite the difficulty of multilateral security cooperation, are within ASEAN’s capacity to establish.
However, success will depend on whether ASEAN countries implement crucial reforms. In order to stimulate GDP growth, encourage the establishment of competitive and dynamic enterprises, facilitate larger trade flows and create more jobs, they must dismantle barriers that raise costs, inhibit competition and deter new investment.
Throughout this process, ASEAN’s leaders must bear in mind a crucial lesson of the EU: High-level agreements that lack the consent of ordinary people have limited effectiveness and longevity. Citizens — ASEAN’s most important stakeholders — must regard the bloc’s mission as their own. Thus, in order to build public support for the ASEAN Community, policymakers must ensure that it genuinely improves people’s lives by delivering more effective health-care systems, improved housing, better education and greater access to decent, higher-wage jobs.
Furthermore, ASEAN leaders must build durable institutions that represent both the particular interests of individual member countries and the larger interests of the community as a whole. As it stands, ASEAN has no mechanism to expedite decisionmaking in crisis situations or, more important, to enforce compliance with collective decisions — a deficiency highlighted by disputes over the proposed code of conduct for the South China Sea.
The ASEAN Secretariat, for example, lacks the authority and resources to perform crucial functions, including formulating policies, coordinating implementation, monitoring compliance and settling disputes. As a result, ASEAN, as a McKinsey Global Institute study argued, effectively “grants a veto to any country that resists regional economic integration.”
While US efforts to enhance stability in the Asia-Pacific region are welcome, they are inadequate to offset rising strategic and economic uncertainty. Only by building a more unified, dynamic community can ASEAN leaders secure a more prosperous, stable, and sustainable future for their citizens.
Fidel Ramos, a former president of the Philippines, is a member of the ASEAN Eminent Persons Group that provided the concepts and guidelines for drafting the ASEAN Charter.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs